Rabbit Town Versus El Baldo

January 2, 2007

Reports from a village near Madrid state that The Bald One has finally received justice through the heroic efforts of the Spanish people.

Javier Vernui, known as "The Bald One" (or "El Baldo" in Spanish), has terrorized the village of Villaconejos for years, according to the mayor and other residents. They said that Vernui would go into bars and supermarkets in town carrying a pistol or knife, and would simply take what he wanted without paying. Mayor Benavente de Blas said "Bernui didn’t hesitate to use violence against the residents in bars, drove his car wherever he liked and did whatever he felt like."

The next-to-last straw came on December 23, when El Baldo entered a Villaconejos bar and pushed other customers out of the way. A man reportedly told him "enough is enough" and gave him a beating. Unchastened, El Baldo y sus amigos returned a week later and trashed the place.

That was the last straw, and it prompted 200 residents of Villaconejos ("Rabbit Town") to show up at Bernui’s house the next day in protest. Police showed up (from wherever they’ve been for the past seven years) to control the crowd, and they arrested El Baldo when he fired shots into the air. But the next day, a crowd twice that size (over ten percent of the town’s residents) showed up and set fire to Bernui’s house, garage, two cars, a van, and three motorcycles, and then blocked the road so firefighters could not get through. No one was hurt — Bernui was in jail and police evacuated the other residents. "It was all of us," said mayor de Blas when asked who did the burning. "It was the people [of Rabbit Town]."